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Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Red Rock Beatle Memories

Finding photos of the Beatles at the Red Rocks concert was difficult, but finding photos of the fans at the concert was easy. Here are some great photographs of Beatlemania at it's highest. The color photo shows a girl in the middle of the crowd looking at the camera. That is Connie Paris, who was a big Beatles fan and attended the concert at the Red Rocks with five of her friends from high school. In March of 1968, Connie went missing after she was going to the Denver library to work on a school paper. A few days later her body was found and it was apparent that she had been strangled to death. Connie's murder has remained a mystery all of these years and so I want to dedicate this blog post to the memory of a Beatle fan who saw the Beatles in concert and her friends recall them all jumping up and down when the Beatles were on stage.

Here are some memories I found scatted throughout the world wide web about this concert.

"I was there! With astonishing trust and understanding, my
pretty cool parents bought my sister (13) and I (9) tickets, drove us to Red
Rocks, waited for us in the parking lot, and probably heard the concert better
than we did. They knew what the Beatles meant to us. Mom had even taken us to
the airport to see them arrive. I can't imagine dropping a nine-year-old off
for a concert today. I also can't imagine having to make a withdrawal from
savings to buy a concert ticket ($6.50 a pop)." -- anonymous

"I was there! My mom bought tickets for me and my best
friend, but her mother wouldn't let her go. I was 14, she was 13. So mom took
me, and she loved the Beatles, thought John and Paul were geniuses!" -- anonymous

"I was 7....my mom took me.....biggest problem is that
everyone stood nearly the whole concert......and all the teenie-bopper girls
were screaming. Being 7 and nowhere near as tall as most of the crowd, I really
didn't get to see or hear much.....but I was in heaven just being there. "–Stephanie

“The thing that sticks in my mind the most is the parking
lot.” "Cars and buses were parked end to end. There were no traffic lanes,
just a sea of vehicles parked as close together as they could possibly get.
When it was over, exiting the parking lot took such a long time." –Holly H.

"I went with my best friend from Laramie and my mother
drove us because she was afraid of all the traffic. We got there at 2:30 p.m.
and the place was already about a third full," Diane L.

And here is part of a news story about a fan that was at the concert

Robert Boice was 6 years old at the show, brought along by
his mom and sisters to celebrate the growing Beatlemania that had enveloped
their home in Cheyenne. His family managed to get into the venue early by telling
police they were tourists from Wyoming and knew nothing about the show.

"The license plate on our car and the way we were dressed really
helped," Robert said. "We actually wound up in about the fifth row in
the middle and were able to hear a lot of it. The best you could hear was the
between-songs banter, which was mostly just one-liners from John, who was
always so good at that stuff."

Robert's sister Jacklyn Boice listed some of the songs she remembered from the
set in the journal she kept at the time: "Twist and Shout,"
"Roll Over Beethoven" and "Boys," which was done by Ringo.
In all, she said the show was only about 35 minutes.

"The last song of the concert was 'She Loves You,'" she said.
"Some girls began surging toward the railing, but the police held them
back."

Hey, these pictures are spine-tingling regardless of where they are from (though, of course, I am happy for the correction!!! Good catch, friend!). These pics are awesome. With a capital "w"! As in, the exact definition of "awesome"!

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Welcome Beatle fans!

This blog is to highlight photos and stories of people who have met the Beatles in person. And while fan taken photos are my favorite, I also like to include vintage fan photos and other photos that show the Beatles meeting fans.

The idea behind this blog is to follow in the footsteps of the great Beatle fanzines of the 1970's & 1980's such as The Write Thing, The Harrison Alliance, With a Little Help from my Friends, Paperback Writer, etc etc. Photos and article from those publications and others are reproduced here to preserve the history of the fans who met one or more Beatle in person.

If you have ever met one of the Beatles and have a story or pictures to share, please contact me, Sara, at Starshyne9@yahoo.com.

I have never met the Beatles (besides in my dreams) but love fan photos. These photos are from my collection, which spans 17 years of online photo collecting and scanning books. I do not claim any copyright of these photos or stories. Some of them are sent to me and published with permission. Others are scanned from magazines, books and found in various places online. I do not watermark photos that I place on this blog because I do not own any of the photos. These photos are on this blog in an attempt to preserve the history of the Beatles. If you own the rights to a photo and wish to have it removed from this blog, please contact me.